Adobe wall & round room

We started the adobe wall on Friday. The adobe will absorb heat from our South facing greenhouse for the passive solar aspect of our house.









After much head scratching Ivy and I figured out how to frame the curved breakfast nook. It will have 5 windows when we are done.

Post, beam & septic

The guys plumb up the box posts. The posts are used for mounting windows and doors. The windows are set inside the posts and the straw bales are set between them. The posts are 16" wide. After they are plumbed they set the bond beam on top and it and we are ready for the trusses.
Meanwhile our friends Norbert Vigil and his son Norbie install our septic system. They were able to clear the large area required for the drain field without removing any trees. We got the inspection
and they backfilled it by lunch today.

Window frames

We continue to frame walls. The South facing walls are mostly windows so we do them in traditional 2x6 framing. The other walls will be strawbale. We will set 16" wide posts to accommodate the bales.

Out of the ground

Today we started framing the garage. Here Suzie helps Ivy raise the first wall. Brian puts a brace on the wall. Finally at the end of the day we admire the two walls we framed.

Lets build this house

We let the concrete cure over the weekend and today the crew showed up to work on the next phase. From the left, Ivan, me, Brian and Ivy. Johnathan is taking the picture. We stripped the forms then set up an assembly line and started building posts.

The pour

Today was the big day, the pour. Art Gonzalez from A&S construction and his crew smoothed out the concrete for us. It went well. We will cover it up for the weekend and pull the forms on Monday.

The heat is on

We got our foundation inspection today. Now we are laying tubing for radiant heat. We laid it a 6" on center. That is a lot of tubing but it will operate at a lower temperature and provide a lot of storage do we can use solar hot water panels to heat the house. We have scheduled our pour for next Wednesday.